During the beginning of the HIV epidemic in 1981 25 million people have died. The introduction of ART therefore has promising developments to reduce mortality rates and new infections. Nevertheless there is still a challenge with adherence to ART worldwide and in South Africa. The purpose of the study was to determine the factors contributing to non-adherence to ART among HIV positive pregnant women. The study involved a nonprobability sample of 70 HIV pregnant women on ART attending antenatal care clinics at the tertiary hospital and two community health centres,in Buffalo City, Amathole District, Eastern Cape. A coded questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. Ethical procedure was followed and a consent form was signed by each participant. Data was collected for a period of two months The demographic data reveals that the majority of the participants were knowledgeable about ART and employed. That is evident in the adherence to ART in all age groups except age 40 and above. The majority of HIV positive pregnant women on ART who participated in the study were single 50% (n=35) which suggests that they may lack emotional support from partners and may have difficulty in disclosing their status. Level of adherence revealed that 27% (n=19) of participants missed ART because of forgetfulness, and 16% (n=12) and others were feeling healthy due to frequent follow ups and complying with the ART. Poor follow up, too sick, side effects pill burden, fear of stigma, lack of finances and taking alcohol hinders the proper management of HIV positive pregnant women and is risky to the unborn baby. HIV positive pregnant women on ART exhibited a good knowledge and use of ART. This is encouraging and should be sustained by continuous community awareness campaigns to empower the communities about HIV/AIDS, PMTCT programme and ART and extensive training of health care providers.


Marked increase in cell permeability ascribed to open connexin (Cx)43 hemichannels is induced by metabolic inhibition (MI) of cortical astrocytes in culture, but the molecular mechanisms are not established. Dephosphorylation and/or oxidation of Cx43 hemichannels was proposed as a potential mechanism to increase their open probability. We now demonstrate that MI increases the number of hemichannels on the cell surface assayed by biotinylation and Western blot, and that this change is followed by increased dephosphorylation and S-nitrosylation. The increase in rate of dye uptake caused by MI is comparable to the increase in surface expression; thus, open probability and permeation per hemichannel may be unchanged. Reducing agents did not affect dephosphorylation of Cx43 hemichannels but reduced dye uptake and S-nitrosylation. Uptake was also reduced by elevated intracellular but not extracellular levels of reduced glutathione. Moreover, nitric oxide donors induced dye uptake and nitrosylation of surface Cx43 but did not affect its abundance or phosphorylation. Thus, permeability per channel is increased, presumably because of increase in open probability. We propose that increased dye uptake induced by MI is mediated by an increased number of Cx43 hemichannels in the surface and is associated with multiple molecular changes, among which nitrosylation of intracellular Cx43 cysteine residues may be a critical factor.


Identity, since long a concept used in developmental theories on puberty and early adolescence, in this article is used as a concept describing the situational determined process of creating a distinct profile of the school. In this process, it is argued, the role of the principal of the school is of particular interest. The Self Confrontation Method (SCM) is supposed to play an important role in clarifying the autobiographical aspects of the principal's main life theme in relation to his role of being the leading and motivating person in the creative process of identity development of the school. The principal's life theme and the process of identity development of the school seem to be closely related. Key terms: Identity; School identity; Biographical perspective; Self Confrontation Method (SCM).


Archaeological sites around Greece are usually large scale open spaces that are colonized by dense populations of various weed species soon after the excavations. This causes severe problems to both the monument and the functionality of the site that includes mechanical damages to the architectural parts, obstruction of restoration and excavation works, obstruction of visitor access, visual exclusion of the monument, threat of fire during the dry summer period and chemical corrosion. The national law for the protection of man and the environment prohibits the spraying of pesticides in archaeological sites. Soil solarization is a non-chemical method of weed suppression that could be applied as an alternative method in archaeological sites. The aim of the study was to determine the most effective combination of plastic mulch type, application period and soil pretreatment in weed suppression. An experimental field was set up in the Agricultural University of Athens in July 2014. Soil solarization treatments included two types of plastic mulch (opaque and clear), two application periods (July to August and August to September) and two types of soil pretreatments (no tillage, with tillage). Weed species growth was significantly affected by soil solarization treatments. Visual ratings of weed control revealed that clear plastic mulching during July-August provided close to 100% control for six months after treatments, even without soil pretreatment. Clear plastic mulching during August-September provided four months of around 100% residual control, while opaque mulching provided only one to two months of above 90% control for both application periods and soil pretreatments. Lowest fresh and dry biomass weight was measured under clear plastic mulching applied July-August with no differences between soil pretreatments. Second best results concerning biomass weight were obtained by clear plastic mulching applied August-September, with no differences between soil pretreatments. In conclusion, it was shown that soil solarization can be utilized effectively as an alternative tool for weed control in archaeological sites.


The main purpose of this work is to prepare various activated carbons by K2 S activation of coal with size fractions of 60–80 meshes, and investigate the microporosity development and corresponding methane storage capacities. Raw coal is mixed with K2 S powder, and then heated at 750°C–900°C for 30 min–150 min in N2 atmosphere to produce the adsorbents. The texture and surface morphology are characterized by a N2adsorption/desorption isotherm at 77 K and scanning electron microscopy(SEM). The chemical properties of carbons are confirmed by ultimate analysis. The crystal structure and degree of graphitization are tested by X-ray diffraction and Raman spectra. The relationship between sulfur content and the specific surface area of the adsorbents is also determined. K2 S activation is helps to bring about better development of pore texture. These adsorbents are microporous materials with textural parameters increasing in a range of specific surface area 72.27 m2/g–657.7 m2/g and micropore volume 0.035 cm3/g–0.334 cm3/g. The ability of activated carbons to adsorb methane is measured at 298 K and at pressures up to 5.0 MPa by a volumetric method. The Langmuir model fits the experimental data well. It is concluded that the high specific surface area and micropore volume of activated carbons do determine methane adsorption capacity. The adsorbents obtained at 800°C for 90 min with K2S/raw coal mass ratios of 1.0 and 1.2 show the highest methane adsorption capacities amounting to 106.98 mg/g and 106.17 mg/g,respectively.


Singapore was under British and Japanese rule from 1819 to 1945. In 1946 the British provided free primary schooling in the Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil streams and there were only secondary schools in the English and Chinese streams. The first professional library association was formed in 1955 and the first short course on librarianship was conducted for 55 teachers in the primary and secondary schools. Subsequently, only two short courses were conducted in 1959 and 1961. After attaining self government in 1959, Malay and Tamil secondary schools were established for the first time. In 1964 the Commission of Inquiry into Education recommended that teacher librarians should be given training on school librarianship. Courses were conducted at the Teachers Training College (TTC) from 1968 to 1969. A survey on secondary schools was conducted in 1968/69 and it was discovered that school libraries were run by untrained personnel and were not given sufficient time to do the job. The first ―Recommended minimum standards for secondary school libraries‖ was published in 1972 stating that a trained teacher-librarian should be in charge of the school library. The Institute of Education (formerly TTC) and the Library Association of Singapore (LAS) began to conducted courses on school librarianship from 1973 to 1979. The courses were discontinued after 1979. In 1973 the Ministry of Education (MOE) established a School Library Unit with one officer in charge of 352 primary schools and 93 secondary schools. However, it was only in 1977 that MoE provided funding for schools to convert classrooms into libraries and the purchase of books. In the same year the position of Library Coordinator (LC), a trained teacher, in charge of all teacher librarians in a school, was created. In 1992 Temasek Polytechnic (TP) conducted the part-time Certificate in Library and Information Studies course. Its Diploma in Information Studies courses were organized six years later. In 1993 the Division of Information Studies was set up at Nanyang Technological University to conduct part-time two-year Master of Science courses in information studies, offering a specialization track in managing media resource libraries. In 1997 the MOE launched its ―Thinking Schools, Learning Nation‖ vision to teach creative teaching in schools and introducing project work. Since 1999 the MOE outsourced the management of its library automation system and staff to manage media resource libraries (MRLs, formerly called school libraries). In a survey of 112 LCs (out of 159) conducted in 2001, they agree they lack professional training and recognition. The School Library Unit was dissolved in 1999 and in 2005 TP stopped offering courses in information studies. The outsourcing has completed two cycles from 2000 to 2005 and from 2006 to 2010. The third cycle commenced in the third quarter of 2010. The vendor would find difficulty to recruit suitably trained personnel to managed MRLs. This paper attempts to identify the gaps in the supply of qualified staff and provide opportunities for stakeholders to contribute the lack of manpower training, including the perceived challenges to initiate manpower planning for MRLs.


In order to find out the dynamic peculiarity of piezoelectric-stack displacement-amplifying actuator, three methods: harmonic response analysis, impedance test and dynamic grating projection are used to analyze it. Experimental results indicate that the displacement-amplifying mechanism can provide large output torque; its response time is less than 0.3ms; its mutation time of displacement is less than 0.5ms, the fluctuation of displacement is less than 5um, and the change of displacement vs. voltage is linearity variety; its dynamic displacement is smooth, when discharging. After analyzing the actuator, some virtues of dynamic response peculiarity are shown: rapidly responding, tiny displacement fluctuates, fine displacement linearity, higher precision, large output torque, etc. Therefore it can be abroad applied in many micro-displacement control and drive systems, which need high precision and large displacement. Its application prospect is worth to expect.


Developing countries are gravely challenged by the adverse effects of climate change and natural disasters. The Philippines is considered as one of the most vulnerable and disaster-prone countries in the world. The European Union (EU) as a development partner extends support to the Philippines on climate change. While there are global and national initiatives to take action on these issues, the challenge is how local governments can engage communities to address these environmental threats. The paper poses the following questions: (1) What initiatives did the Philippine national government undertake to address climate change and disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) in the Philippines? (2) What assistance does the EU provide to the Philippines in tackling climate change? (3) In what ways is information and communications (ICT) used by local governments as a mechanism to engage their constituents in dealing with climate change and natural disasters? Documentary analysis of Philippine laws on ICT, climate change, and disaster risk reduction and management are employed to determine the policy framework of the Philippines as a case. Desktop research is undertaken to evaluate the content of selected local government websites on disaster management and to identify the forms of EU technical assistance to the Philippines on climate change. While national policies exist to deal with climate change and disaster management, initiatives may take a backseat given the current pandemic.
Keywords: climate change, disaster risk reduction and management, Philippines, information & communications technology, local governance, EU assistance


The studies presented here focus on the relationship between legiti mizing ideologies and ambivalent sexism. 544 Italian students (Study 1) and 297 US students (Study 2) completed several scales: social dominance orientation (SDO), system justification (SJ), political orientation, religiosity, and the Glick and Fiske (J Pers Soc Psychol 70(3):491-512, 1996) Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. Zero-order correlations revealed all facets of ideological attitudes to be positively related to each other and correlated with ambivalent sexism. In particular, the SDO was related to both ideology components of SJ and political orientation and to ambiv alent sexism (hostile and benevolent). Moderated regressions revealed that SDO has a positive impact on hostile sexism for men only, while SJ has a positive impact on hostile sexism for women only. While the first result was stable across the two studies, the last moderated effect has been detected only in Study 1. We discuss the results with respect to different facets of social ideologies and cultural differences between the two countries.


Design is about wealth creation for the comfort and well-being of human beings. In this context, the process and experiences associated with teaching and learning of engineering design are pivotal in sustaining and advancing the progress of modern day civilization. However, the teaching of engineering design is not easy and fraught with difficulties as the students have to be provided with the opportunity to develop their creative skills while retaining a professional and practical base. It is also important to proactively harness the available and emerging technologies to greater effect in the learning process. At the University of New South Wales in Australia, we have approached the teaching and learning of design in undergraduate aerospace engineering from a perspective to prepare students to be creative and become practically oriented for productive employment in the very competitive world of today.


This study is aimed to examine the Health Information Needs of the Women in Self Help Groups. The Interview – schedule method was adopted for data collection This study examines the demographic characteristics of the respondents, purpose of Information need, types of information's needed and the channels of communication for the respondents. The highest number of respondents 67 (42.94%) were in the category of 30-40. 32(20.51%) were for the purpose of awareness about the epidemic /chronic diseases. 27(17.3%) respondents were needed for diseases information/diagnosis and treatment. The highest number of respondents were 32(20.51%) used Television/Radio as a communication channel because the middle and the low income peoples only entertainment is watching Television and Listening the Radio. 102(65.38) were aware about the infertility/childcare/ family planning and public health because of the continuous efforts of the government welfare schemes and the tireless work of the public health workers


We investigate the reasons why context in object detection has limited utility by isolating and evaluating the predictive power of different context cues under ideal conditions in which context provided by an oracle. Based on this study, we propose a region-based context re-scoring method with dynamic context selection to remove noise and emphasize informative context. We introduce latent indicator variables to select (or ignore) potential contextual regions, and learn the selection strategy with latent-SVM. We conduct experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed context selection method on the SUN RGB-D dataset. The method achieves a significant improvement in terms of mean average precision (mAP), compared with both appearance based detectors and a conventional context model without the selection scheme.


Dynamic topic models (DTM) are commonly used for mining latent topics in evolving web corpora. In this paper, we note that a major limitation of the conventional DTM based models is that they assume a predetermined and fixed scale of topics. In reality, however, topics may have varying spans and topics of multiple scales can co-exist in a single web or social media data stream. Therefore, DTMs that assume a fixed epoch length may not be able to effectively capture latent topics and thus negatively affect accuracy. In this paper, we propose a Multi-Scale Dynamic Topic Model (MS-DTM) and a complementary Incremental Multi-Scale Dynamic Topic Model (IMS-DTM) inference method that can be used to capture latent topics and their dynamics simultaneously, at different scales. In this model, topic specific feature distributions are generated based on a multi-scale feature distribution of the previous epochs; moreover, multiple scales of the current epoch are analyzed together through a novel multi-scale incremental Gibbs sampling technique. We show that the proposed model significantly improves efficiency and effectiveness compared to the single scale dynamic DTMs and prior models that consider only multiple scales of the past.


Abstract Background The last two decades have seen a significant decrease in mortality for children <5 years of age in low and middle‐income countries (LMICs); however, neonatal (age, 0–28 days) mortality has not decreased at the same rate. We assessed three neonatal nutritional interventions that have the potential of reducing morbidity and mortality during infancy in LMICs. Objectives To determine the efficacy and effectiveness of synthetic vitamin A, dextrose oral gel, and probiotic supplementation during the neonatal period. Search Methods We conducted electronic searches for relevant studies on the following databases: PubMed, CINAHL, LILACS, SCOPUS, and CENTRAL, Cochrane Central Register for Controlled Trials, up to November 27, 2019. Selection Criteria We aimed to include randomized and quasi‐experimental studies. The target population was neonates in LMICs. The interventions included synthetic vitamin A supplementation, oral dextrose gel supplementation, and probiotic supplementation during the neonatal period. We included studies from the community and hospital settings irrespective of the gestational age or birth weight of the neonate. Data Collection and Analysis Two authors screened the titles and extracted the data from selected studies. The risk of bias (ROB) in the included studies was assessed according to the Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews. The primary outcome was all‐cause mortality. The secondary outcomes were neonatal sepsis, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), prevention and treatment of neonatal hypoglycaemia, adverse events, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. Data were meta‐analyzed by random effect models to obtain relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for dichotomous outcomes and mean difference with 95% CI for continuous outcomes. The overall rating of evidence was determined by the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. Main Results Sixteen randomized studies (total participants 169,366) assessed the effect of vitamin A supplementation during the neonatal period. All studies were conducted in low‐ and middle‐income (LMIC) countries. Thirteen studies were conducted in the community setting and three studies were conducted in the hospital setting, specifically in neonatal intensive care units. Studies were conducted in 10 different countries including India (four studies), Guinea‐Bissau (three studies), Bangladesh (two studies), and one study each in China, Ghana, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. The overall ROB was low in most of the included studies for neonatal vitamin A supplementation. The pooled results from the community based randomized studies showed that there was no significant difference in all‐cause mortality in the vitamin A (intervention) group compared to controls at 1 month (RR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.90–1.08; six studies with 126,548 participants, statistical heterogeneity I 2 0%, funnel plot symmetrical, grade rating high), 6 months (RR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.89–1.07; 12 studies with 154,940 participants, statistical heterogeneity I 2 43%, funnel plot symmetrical, GRADE quality high) and 12 months of age (RR, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.94–1.14; eight studies with 118,376 participants, statistical heterogeneity I 2 46%, funnel plot symmetrical, GRADE quality high). Neonatal vitamin A supplementation increased the incidence of bulging fontanelle by 53% compared to control (RR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.12–2.09; six studies with 100,256 participants, statistical heterogeneity I 2 65%, funnel plot symmetrical, GRADE quality high). We did not identify any experimental study that addressed the use of dextrose gel for the prevention and/or treatment of neonatal hypoglycaemia in LMIC. Thirty‐three studies assessed the effect of probiotic supplementation during the neonatal period (total participants 11,595; probiotics: 5854 and controls: 5741). All of the included studies were conducted in LMIC and were randomized. Most of the studies were done in the hospital setting and included participants who were preterm (born < 37 weeks gestation) and/or low birth weight (<2500 g birth weight). Studies were conducted in 13 different countries with 10 studies conducted in India, six studies in Turkey, three studies each in China and Iran, two each in Mexico and South Africa, and one each in Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Thailand. Three studies were at high ROB due to lack of appropriate randomization sequence or allocation concealment. Combined data from 25 studies showed that probiotic supplementation reduced all‐cause mortality by 20% compared to controls (RR, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.66–0.96; total number of participants 10,998, number needed to treat 100, statistical heterogeneity I 2 0%, funnel plot symmetrical, GRADE quality high). Twenty‐nine studies reported the effect of probiotics on the incidence of NEC, and the combined results showed a relative reduction of 54% in the intervention group compared to controls (RR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.35–0.59; total number of participants 5574, number needed to treat 17, statistical heterogeneity I 2 24%, funnel plot symmetrical, GRADE quality high). Twenty‐one studies assessed the effect of probiotic supplementation during the neonatal period on neonatal sepsis, and the combined results showed a relative reduction of 22% in the intervention group compared to controls (RR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.70–0.86; total number of participants 9105, number needed to treat 14, statistical heterogeneity I 2 23%, funnel plot symmetrical, GRADE quality high). Authors' Conclusions Vitamin A supplementation during the neonatal period does not reduce all‐cause neonatal or infant mortality in LMICs in the community setting. However, neonatal vitamin A supplementation increases the risk of Bulging Fontanelle. No experimental or quasi‐experimental studies were available from LMICs to assess the effect of dextrose gel supplementation for the prevention or treatment of neonatal hypoglycaemia. Probiotic supplementation during the neonatal period seems to reduce all‐cause mortality, NEC, and sepsis in babies born with low birth weight and/or preterm in the hospital setting. There was clinical heterogeneity in the use of probiotics, and we could not recommend any single strain of probiotics for wider use based on these results. There was a lack of studies on probiotic supplementation in the community setting. More research is needed to assess the effect of probiotics administered to neonates in‐home/community setting in LMICs.


The clinic signs, diagnosis, the course and treatment peculiarities of pulmonary tuberculoma in 82 patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) were presented. In majority of patients the disease course was asymptomatic. All the patients were operated on. In 15.73% of patients postoperative complications occurred. One-fifteen years follow-up of treatment results is available. Mortality and the tuberculosis reactivation were not noted. In majority of patients a significant improvement in DM course was noted.


The study was conducted to determine the possibility for culturing African catfish Clarias
gariepinus juvenile in low saline water and to determine the optimum level of salinity for
survival and growth. The study was carried out with six treatments from 0 (as a control),
1, 2, 3, 4 and 5ppt of water media with three replicate in each level. African catfish
juvenile with an initial length of 0.26 and 0.29 gram were stocked at 20 tails per 7 liter
no recirculating aquarium tank in each treatment. Prior to the experiment juvenile were
acclimated by a gradually increased the salinity per hour for each treatment. Juvenile
were fed by using marine sinking pellet until satiation twice a day at 8.30 am to 3.30
pm. Furthermore, survival and growth performance were evaluated. After three weeks of
experiment, there are no significant different in survival result. Survival was almost
similar at all levels of salinity. The best growth (final weight (g), weight gain (%) and
SGR(g/%» was perform in 1ppt are 2.679±0.02, 371.254, 5.565 respectively and the
poorest was at 5ppt where the growth performance are 1.824±0.15, 259.799, 4.578,
respectively. Overall, the optimum level of salinity for culturing juvenile was suggested at
1ppt due to the best growth performance.


ABSTRACT This study employs unique household data collected in cyclone-affected communities in Bangladesh to investigate whether religious fractionalisation is associated with crime victimisation after disasters. The identification strategy relies on two characteristics of the study area: 1) its religious composition is stable; and 2) its households' pre-disaster socio-economic status is uncorrelated with religious fractionalisation and disaster damage after controlling for the observed characteristics. The findings suggest that households in disaster-affected and religiously fractionalised communities are more likely to be victims after a natural disaster than are households in non-fractionalised communities. This study also finds empirical support for the idea that the result is driven by the misallocation of disaster relief in fractionalised communities.


The detailed organization of somatosensory area 3a was examined in macaque monkeys using multiunit electrophysiological recording techniques. By examining topographic relationships, changes in receptive field size, and the type of stimulus that neurons responded to, functional boundaries of area 3a were determined and related to architectonic boundaries. One striking observation was that the location of area 3a varied with respect to the central sulcus. In one‐half of the cases area 3a was on the rostral bank and fundus of the central sulcus and in the other half of the cases it was on the caudal bank and fundus of the central sulcus. In terms of topographic organization, we found that area 3a contains a complete representation of deep receptors and musculature of the contralateral body, and that the general organization of body part representations mirrors that of the primary somatosensory area, 3b. These results as well as results from studies of area 3a in ours and other laboratories indicate that area 3a is part of a network involved in proprioception, postural control, and the generation of coordinated movements. Further, comparative analysis of area 3a in a variety of species suggests that its construction is based, to a large extent, on the use of a particular body part rather than on innervation density. J. Comp. Neurol. 471:97–111, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Few-shot text classification aims to classify the text under the few-shot scenario. Most of the previous methods adopt optimization-based meta learning to obtain task distribution. However, due to the neglect of matching between the few amount of samples and complicated models, as well as the distinction between useful and useless task features, these methods suffer from the overfitting issue. To address this issue, we propose a novel Adaptive Meta-learner via Gradient Similarity (AMGS) method to improve the model generalization ability to a new task. Specifically, the proposed AMGS alleviates the overfitting based on two aspects: (i) acquiring the potential semantic representation of samples and improving model generalization through the self-supervised auxiliary task in the inner loop, (ii) leveraging the adaptive meta-learner via gradient similarity to add constraints on the gradient obtained by base-learner in the outer loop. Moreover, we make a systematic analysis of the influence of regularization on the entire framework. Experimental results on several benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed AMGS consistently improves few-shot text classification performance compared with the state-of-the-art optimization-based meta-learning approaches. The code is available at: https://github.com/Tianyi-Lei.


BACKGROUND
A major concern of physicians treating pain patients with chronic opioid therapy and similar drugs is determining whether the patients are also using illicit drugs. This is commonly determined by urine drug testing (UDT). However, there are few studies on whether or not monitoring patients by this technique decreases illicit drug use.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if the presence of illicit drugs decreases over a number of physician visits where UDT was performed.

METHOD
The method involved a retrospective study of tests for the illicit drugs marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstacy (MDMA) phencyclidine (PCP) and the heroin metabolite, 6-acetylmorphine as confirmed by Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). A database of 150,000 patient visits was examined for the presence of any of these 6 drugs.

RESULTS
A total of 87,000 patients were initially tested. The number of patients who were repeatedly tested decreased over time. The percentage of patients positive for any of these illicit drugs decreased from 23% to 9% after 14 visits where UDT was performed. When graphed there was a trend to decreasing use. The Spearman correlation = -0.88, p < 0.0001. The major illicit drug was marijuana. When this was removed from the analysis, there was an even greater correlation with decreased illicit drug use. Spearman correlation = -0.92 (p < 0.0001) using a weighted correlation.

LIMITATION
Patients continuing to use illicit drugs might be dismissed from practices thus biasing the study towards illicit drug avoidance.

CONCLUSION
Continued UDT might decrease illicit drug use among pain patients.


Linear type systems permit programmers to deallocate or explicitly recycle memory, but they are severly restricted by the fact that they admit no aliasing. This paper describes a pseudo-linear type system that allows a degree of aliasing and memory reuse as well as the ability to define complex recursive data structures. Our type system can encode conventional linear data structures such as linear lists and trees as well as more sophisticated data structures including cyclic and doubly-linked lists and trees. In the latter cases, our type system is expressive enough to represent pointer aliasing and yet safely permit destructive operations such as object deallocation. We demonstrate the flexibility of our type system by encoding two common compiler optimizations: destination-passing style and Deutsch-Schorr-Waite or ``link-reversal'''' traversal algorithms.


The Ister (Ross and Barison, 2003)—part documentary, travelogue and philosophical meditation supplementing Heidegger's meditation on Holderlin's poem about the Danube—opens and closes with sequences of a duck waddling along the bank of the river. The intervening film, all 3 hours of it, is in effect a large insert edit between these two sequences, or rather, this single sequence. Seen in this way, and given the significant involvement in and engagement with Bernard Stiegler's thinking of technology that The Ister evinces (interviews with Stiegler, among others, take up much of the time of this insert), the film invites consideration in terms of his theorisation of cinema as key representational technology of the Twentieth century. His published work on cinema postdates the film but it nonetheless represents an intriguing anticipation of and in some ways response to his both theoretical and polemical approach to cinema. This paper will outline and examine some major tenets of Stiegler's account of cinema by trying to time the momentary duck's walk that is the extended duration of The Ister. This will involve an editing project of its own that cuts between analysis of the film, theories and practices of editing and Stiegler's post-phenomenological account of consciousness.


Increasing the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) content of milk has been the focus of much recent research. Milk from pasture based cows has been reported to have a high content of PUFA, which can be further manipulated with the addition of supplements differing in fatty acid composition. This experiment used 980 Holstein-Friesian and Jersey crossbred cows in a split treatment design to determine the effect of canola pulp or wheat supplementation on milk fatty acid composition and milk solid production in a typical large pasture based herd. Principle component analysis was used to determine the most influential factors of change in milk composition. Milk solid production did not differ significantly between treatments (P > 0.05), C10:0, C12:0, C14:0, and C16:0 were very significantly (P < 0.001) decreased by the canola pulp treatment. C18:0 anteiso and conjugated linoleic acid were not significantly affected by treatment. C18:1 c9 and C18:1 t9 were very significantly increased (P < 0.001). C18:1 t11 was significantly increased in the canola pulp treatment (P < 0.03). These results show that canola pulp is a potentially valuable supplement for use in grazing based systems. The equivalent response to supplementation compared to wheat would recommend its use if cost on an ME basis was competitive.


(Philips medical system, Bothell, Washington, USA) with a 7-2MHz matrix-array transducer. We firstly acquired an apical four-chamber view of the fetal heart, with either fetal spine posterior (apex at about 12 o'clock) or fetal spine anterior (apex at about 6 o'clock). Next, the live 3D imaging function was activated. The acquisition angle was adjusted to 72◦ and the volume was then cropped by the green box (along the z-axis) to display the 3D imaging of the four-chamber view. When the fetus remained quiescent for 1 to 2 seconds, the ''freeze'' button was pressed. This produced a cine-loop of real-time 3D volumes. By using the ''cine'' function, the best volume was chosen and then cropped along the x-axis by moving the red box to the right side of the IVS on the four-chamber view. The resultant volume was then turned 90◦ along the y-axis to make the right side of IVS facing the operator. Finally, scroll back the green box (i.e. removing cropping along the original z-axis) for complete display of the enface view of the IVS. Results: The enface view of the fetal IVS was successfully visualized in 153 cases (99.4%) by real-time 3DE with live 3D imaging, including 85 cases with the spine posterior and 68 cases with the spine anterior. The enface view of IVS successfully demonstrated the VSDs in six fetuses with VSD and displayed the intact IVS in one fetus with transposition of great arteries without VSD. Conclusion: Live 3D imaging is a simple method for the rapid assessment of the enface view of IVS, and may potential enhance the diagnostic accuracy of prenatal fetal cardiac examination.


Our understanding of periodontal diseases has evolved considerably. No longer are the notions of universal susceptibility to plaque and calculus with automatic reliance on mechanical debridement valid. The interplay between specific bacteria and the immune response within a complex context of risk factors forms the new paradigm of periodontal disease pathogenesis. New approaches to treatment and prevention and their implications in the elderly will be discussed.


The transient optical conductivity of freely suspended graphene was examined by femtosecond time-resolved spectroscopy using pump excitation at 400 nm and probe radiation at 800 nm. The optical conductivity (or, equivalently, absorption) changes abruptly upon excitation and subsequently relaxes to its initial value on the time scale of 1 ps. The form of the induced change in the optical conductivity varies strongly with excitation conditions, exhibiting a crossover from enhanced to decreased optical conductivity with increasing pump fluence. We describe the graphene response in terms of transient heating of the electrons, with the characteristic relaxation time of the transient conductivity reflecting the cooling of the electron system and the strongly coupled optical phonons through emission of lower energy phonons. The change in the optical conductivity is attributed to a combination of induced absorption from intra-band transitions of the photo-generated carriers and bleaching of the inter-band transitions by Pauli blocking. The former effect, which corresponds to the high-frequency wing of the Drude response, dominates at low pump fluence. In this regime of a limited rise in the electron temperature, an increase in the optical conductivity is observed. At high pump fluence, elevated electron temperatures are achieved. The decrease in the inter-band bleaching then dominates the transient response, the intra-band contribution being overwhelmed despite an increase in the Drude scattering rate with temperature. The temporal evolution of the optical conductivity in all the regimes can be described within a model including the intra- and inter-band contributions with a time-varying electronic temperature. An increased Drude scattering rate is inferred for high electron temperature and mechanisms for this enhancement are considered. The calculated scattering rate for interactions of the carriers with zone-center and zone-edge optical phonons agrees well with the rates obtained from experiment.


The fatigue characteristic of thermal barrier-coated Ni-base superalloy IN738LC at room temperature was studied by fatigue test using SEM-servo testing machine. In order to eliminate the influence of micro-shrinkage in IN738LC and purely investigate the effect of TBC on fatigue characteristic, HIP treated IN738LC was used in comparison with NON-HIP treated one. The results indicate that HIP treatment is effective to remove micro-shrinkage and fatigue life is greatly improved. The TBC coating layer is a strength member in the small test specimen at room temperature, and TBC coated material showed lower fatigue life rather than IN738LC without TBC.


Leprosy elimination has been a goal of the WHO for the past 15 years. Widespread BCG vaccination and multidrug therapy have dramatically reduced worldwide leprosy prevalence, but new case detection rates have remained relatively constant. These data suggest that additional control strategies, such as a subunit vaccine, are required to block transmission and to improve leprosy control. We recently identified several Mycobacterium leprae antigens that stimulate gamma interferon (IFN- (cid:1) ) secretion upon incubation with blood from paucibacillary leprosy patients, a group who limit M. leprae growth and dissemination. In this study, we demonstrate that M. leprae -specific mouse T-cell lines recognize several of these antigens, with the ML0276 protein stimulating the most IFN- (cid:1) secretion. We then examined if the ML0276 protein could be used in a subunit vaccine to provide protection against experimental M. leprae infection. Our data demonstrate that combining ML0276 with either a Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) (EM005), TLR7 (imiquimod), or TLR9 (CpG DNA) agonist during immunization induces Th1 responses that limit local inflammation upon experimental M. leprae infection. Our data indicate that only the ML0276/EM005 regimen is able to elicit a response that is transferable to recipient mice. Despite the potent Th1 response induced by this regimen, it could not provide protection in terms of limiting bacterial growth. We conclude that EM005 is the most potent adjuvant for stimulating a Th1 response and indicate that while a subunit vaccine containing the ML0276 protein may be useful for the prevention of immune pathology during leprosy, it will not control bacterial burden and is therefore unlikely to interrupt disease transmission.


ABSTRACT Although epigenetic modulation is critical for a variety of cellular activities, its role in erythropoiesis remains poorly understood. Ten-eleven translocation (TET) molecules participate in methylcytosine (5mC) hydroxylation, which results in DNA demethylation in several biological processes. In this research, the role of TETs in erythropoiesis was investigated by using the zebrafish model, where three TET homologs were identified. These homologs share conserved structural domains with their mammalian counterparts. Zebrafish TETs mediate the conversion of 5mC to hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) in zebrafish embryos, and the deletion of TET2 inhibits erythropoiesis by suppressing the expression of the scl, gata-1, and cmyb genes. TET2-upregulated lineage-specific genes and erythropoiesis are closely associated with the occurrence of 5hmC and demethylation in the intermediate CpG promoters (ICPs) of scl, gata-1, cmyb, which frequently occur at specific regions or CpG sites of these ICPs. Moreover, TET2 regulates the formation and differentiation of erythroid progenitors, and deletion of TET2 leads to erythrocyte dysplasia and anemia. Here, we preliminarily proved that TET2 plays an essential role in erythrocyte development by regulating lineage-specific genes via DNA oxidative demethylation. This report is anticipated to broaden current information on hematopoiesis and pathogenesis of hematopoiesis-related diseases.


Over million years of evolution, gas dust and ice in protoplanetary disks can be chemically reprocessed. There is evidence that the gas-phase carbon and oxygen abundances are subsolar in disks belonging to nearby star forming regions. These findings have a major impact on the composition of the primary atmosphere of giant planets (but it may also be valid for super-Earths and sub-Neptunes) as they accrete their gaseous envelopes from the surrounding material in the disk. In this study, we performed a thermochemical modeling analysis with the aim of testing how reliable and robust are the estimates of elemental abundance ratios based on (sub)millimeter observations of molecular lines. We created a grid of disk models for the following different elemental abundance ratios: C/O, N/O, and S/O, and we computed the line flux of a set of carbon-nitrogen and sulphur-bearing species, namely CN, HCN, NO, C2H, c–C3H2, H2CO, HC3N, CH3CN, CS, SO, H2S, and H2CS, which have been detected with present (sub)millimeter facilities such as ALMA and NOEMA. We find that the line fluxes, once normalized to the flux of the 13CO J = 2−1 line, are sensitive to the elemental abundance ratios. On the other hand, the stellar and disk physical parameters have only a minor effect on the line flux ratios. Our results demonstrate that a simultaneous analysis of multiple molecular transitions is a valid approach to constrain the elemental abundance ratio in protoplanetary disks.


ABSTRACT Human parainfluenza virus type III (HPIV3) is a common respiratory pathogen that afflicts children and can be fatal in vulnerable populations, including the immunocompromised. There are currently no effective vaccines or therapeutics available, resulting in tens of thousands of hospitalizations per year. In an effort to discover a protective antibody against HPIV3, we screened the B cell repertoires from peripheral blood, tonsils, and spleen from healthy children and adults. These analyses yielded five monoclonal antibodies that potently neutralized HPIV3 in vitro. These HPIV3-neutralizing antibodies targeted two non-overlapping epitopes of the HPIV3 F protein, with most targeting the apex. Prophylactic administration of one of these antibodies, PI3-E12, resulted in potent protection against HPIV3 infection in cotton rats. Additionally, PI3-E12 could also be used therapeutically to suppress HPIV3 in immunocompromised animals. These results demonstrate the potential clinical utility of PI3-E12 for the prevention or treatment of HPIV3 in both immunocompetent and immunocompromised individuals.


Field collections during November of green-winged teal (Anas crecca), mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), and coot (Fulica atra) feces in Denmark, England, and France were used to examine the potential of waterbirds to disperse aquatic plant, algae, and invertebrate species across Europe. A total of 216 fecal samples were collected, of which 28% contained intact seeds of common wetland plants (Scirpus spp.,Eleocharis spp.,Chenopodium spp.), 7% contained algae oogonia (Chara spp.), and 14% contained invertebrate diapause eggs that included ephippia (Daphnia spp.) and non-ephippial eggs. Many propagules, such asChenopodium seeds,Charophyte oogonia, and invertebrate diapause eggs, were of small size, indicating that either consumption rates or the probability to pass the gut intact is higher for smaller propagule sizes. We found averages of from 0.1 to 1.9 intact seeds and 0.1 to 0.9 intact oogonia and diapause eggs per duck or coot dropping. Our data indicate that propagules of aquatic plants, algae, and invertebrates can be deposited in feces by these waterbird species. We did not measure the viability of propagules and, therefore, have not shown that these propagules escaped digestion to the extent that viability was not altered. Although any given bird may carry few intact propagules, the thousands of waterbirds moving among wetlands collectively are potentially effective at dispersing many species of aquatic organisms.


The wireless sensor networks have attracted much research attention in recent years and are used in many applications including military environment, health monitoring, environment monitoring and other fields. In these applications sensors with limited energy are employed. These sensors measure conditions such as humidity, temperature and light in the environment surrounding them and then transform these data into electrical signals. There is a question "Which ones of attributes processed can be seen around these sensors?" power consumption are important factors for a sensor network. In this paper a new clustering algorithm is proposed that can be used for minimizing the power consumption and prolong the network life time.


In contrast to traditional free space optical (FSO) systems, the new generation is aimed to be transparent to optical fiber where protocols, high signal bandwidths, and high data rates over fiber are all maintained. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate a high speed outdoor full-optical FSO communication system over 100 m link. We first describe the design of our transmitter, which consists of a comb generator and a flexible multiformat transmitter. Our measurements are performed in arid desert area under a light dust storm. In this environment, we use a 12 subcarrier comb generator, each of which is modulated by a quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM) signal. We achieved a 1.08 Tbps error free data rate with 3.6 b/s/Hz spectral efficiency. We place long optical fiber rolls in the transmitter side and the receiver side to mimic real FSO deployments. Furthermore, we investigated the effect of receiver misalignment in outdoor conditions and the effect of background noise. We find that full-optical FSO system is sensitive to the misalignment effect. However, the background noise has negligible effect. Finally, we find that solar heating of the transceiver causes collimator deviation, which requires using a cooling unit or auto tracking system.


A Review of:
Perkins, G.H. & Slowik, A.J.W. (2013). The value of research in academic libraries. College & Research Libraries, 74(2), 143-158. Retrieved from http://crl.acrl.org/content/74/2/143.full.pdf+html

Abstract

Objective – To explore academic library administrators' perceived value of their librarians' research, specifically the importance to the profession and the library community.

Design – Qualitative, exploratory study using a survey questionnaire.

Setting – Academic libraries in the United States of America.

Subjects – 23 library administrators.

Methods – During the summer of 2010, one of the authors conducted 20-30 minute telephone interviews with 23 academic library administrators. Interviews were recorded and transcribed for coding. Interview questions 1-3 and 8-19 were content-analyzed; the authors described common themes for each of these questions. Items 4-7 had Likert scale response formats, and a mean and standard deviation were computed for each of these items.

Main Results – The benefits of librarians' research included fulfilling tenure-track requirements, enriching relationships with teaching faculty, library faculty recognition, improved services and programs, collaboration with others, research result application to daily issues, development as librarians, and improved knowledge of the research field.

The perceived current changes and future issues for university libraries included increased digitization of collections, scholarly communication, and expanded instructional engagement of faculty and students, as well as future economic downturn and budget cuts. Administrators noted several methods that influenced their thinking: professional meetings, reading professional journals, informal discussions with colleagues, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Academic library administrators used a variety of methods to support their librarians' research. These included tenure-track requirements, research incentives, travel funds, grants, sabbaticals, release time, and shared communication about research. Additionally, there was a substantial perceived interrelationship between how librarians' research benefited the librarian, the library, the university, and the profession. Recognition and new programs and services were thought to benefit all four areas, and monetary rewards were considered benefits for the first three areas.

Conclusion – Based on the sample of 23 academic library administrators, the authors conclude that librarians' research is perceived as valuable to both the academic and library communities.


By its nature a spliced girder must contain a number of post-tensioning tendons throughout its length. The focus of the experimental program described in this dissertation is the evaluation of the strength and serviceability of post-tensioned girders loaded in shear, and, more specifically, how a post-tensioning duct located in the web of a girder affects the shear transfer mechanism of a bulb-tee cross-section. Due to the limited number of tests in the literature conducted on full-scale post-tensioned girders, eleven shear tests were performed on seven prestressed concrete bulb-tee girder specimens. Of these tests, ten were conducted on specimens that contained a post-tensioning duct within their web and additional pretensioning reinforcement in their bottom and top flanges. The remaining shear test was conducted on a control specimen that did not have a post-tensioning tendon but contained the same pretensioning reinforcement as the post-tensioned girder specimens. The behavioral characteristics of these eleven test specimens at service level shear forces and at their ultimate shear strengths were evaluated in regards to five primary experimental variables: (i) the presence of a post-tensioning duct, (ii) post-tensioning duct material (plastic or steel), (iii) web-width, (iv) duct diameter, and (v) the transverse reinforcement ratio. The findings of this experimental study are described in detail within this dissertation, but can be summarized by the following two points. (i) No differences were observed in the ultimate or service level shear behavior in girders containing plastic grouted ducts when compared to those containing steel grouted ducts and (ii) The current procedure of reducing the effective web width to account for the presence of a post-tensioning duct is ineffective because it addresses the incorrect shear transfer mechanism. A method that correctly addresses the reduction in shear strength due to the presence of a post-tensioning duct was developed and verified using the tests performed during this experimental program and tests reported in the literature.


The manufacturing industry must diverge from a 'take, make and waste' linear production paradigm towards more circular economies. Truly sustainable, circular economies are intrinsically tied to renewable resource flows, where vast quantities need to be available at a central
 point of consumption. Abundant, renewable carbon feedstocks are often structurally complex and recalcitrant, requiring costly pretreatment to harness their potential fully. As such, the heat integration of supercritical water gasification (SCWG) and aerobic gas fermentation unlocks the promise
 of renewable feedstocks such as lignin. This study models the technoeconomics and life cycle assessment (LCA) for the sustainable production of the commodity chemicals, isopropanol and acetone, from gasified Kraft black liquor. The investment case is underpinned by rigorous process modelling
 informed by published continuous gas fermentation experimental data. Time series analyses support the price forecasts for the solvent products. Furthermore, a Monte Carlo simulation frames an uncertain boundary for the technoeconomic model. The technoeconomic assessment (TEA) demonstrates
 that production of commodity chemicals priced at ~US$1000 per tonne is within reach of aerobic gas fermentation. In addition, owing to the sequestration of biogenic carbon into the solvent products, negative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are achieved within a cradle-to-gate LCA framework.
 As such, the heat integrated aerobic gas fermentation platform has promise as a best-in-class technology for the production of a broad spectrum of renewable commodity chemicals.


During the whole of his writing career August Strindberg was a restless canon-maker. In his capacity as writer, librarian, cultural scholar, polemicist and amateur researcher he constantly quoted sources, both historical and contemporary, included and excluded certain authors in his own work, as well as re-evaluated the boundaries of aesthetics and culture around the turn of the twentieth century. At the same time, he was a very active author in his own right, living in self-imposed exile but in close contact with cosmopolitan intellectual circles. All of this raises questions about his relationship with the literary and cultural canon. The dynamics between local and global culture define the whole of his oeuvre and make him one of those European authors who are readily interpreted in the context of Weltlitemtur. Strindberg was a multilingual cosmopolitan, an emigrant, theosophist, and reporter. In his capacity as a writer, with his gaze trained upon both East and West, he absorbed impressions from the universalist tendencies of the J7W de siecle. His ambition to join the global "Republic of Letters" led him to study French, Hebrew, the Chinese system of logograms, Russian literature, and the history of the Middle East. This volume, edited by Jan Balbierz, gathers contributions from renowned Strindberg scholars and discusses questions, such as: How did Strindberg construct his predecessors and which traditions did he associate himself with? How is a Strindbergian text altered in performative practice in theatre and film? How did Strindberg, whose writings are deeply rooted in Swedish folklore and landscape, relate to foreign cultural.


Background: Reported cases of nearly 2600 children (subjects) who claim to remember previous lives have been investigated in cultures with and without belief in reincarnation. The authenticity in most cases has been established. Aims: To study the influence of attitudes of parents of the subjects, families of the deceased person with whom they are identified and attention paid by others on the features of the cases. Settings and Design: The study is based on field investigations. Materials and Methods: Data is derived from analysis of a larger series of an ongoing project. Information on initial and subsequent attitudes of subjects′ mothers was available for 292 and 136 cases, respectively; attitudes of 227 families of deceased person (previous personality) with whom he is identified, and the extent of attention received from outsiders for 252 cases. Observations and interviews with multiple firsthand informants on both sides of the case as well as some neutral informants supplemented by examination of objective data were the chief methods of investigation. Results: The initial attitude of mothers varied from encouragement (21%) to neutral or tolerance (51%) to discouragement (28%). However, it changed significantly from neutrality to taking measures to induce amnesia in their children for previous life memories due to various psychosocial pressures and prevalent beliefs. Families of the previous personalities, once convinced, showed complete acceptance in a majority of cases. Outside attention was received in 58% cases. Conclusions: The positive attitude of parents might facilitate expression of memories but subsequently attitudes of persons concerned do not seem to alter features of the cases.


In this paper, mechanical and electrical nonlinearities of MEMS resonators are discussed and their influence on the resonant sensing performance is analyzed. An "L-shaped" resonator is proposed in order to reduce the influence of the nonlinear mechanical term on the global response with respect to the more standard clamped-clamped ("I-shaped") resonator. An extended linear behavior of the "L-shaped" resonator is analytically demonstrated and validated through experimental results. As a consequence, the proposed resonator can be driven to larger vibration amplitudes through higher actuation voltages, allowing better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).


Food fortification is an effective strategy for reaching populations with micronutrient deficiencies. Fortification with iron presents a major challenge because of the presence of phytates and other iron absorption inhibitors in diets of poor people. Addition of iron does not necessarily mean that it is absorbed. Because of its low cost and its relative stability in food vehicles, electrolytic iron has been the fortificant of choice in many national programmes, despite its low bioavailability compared to fortificants such as ferrous salts. NaFeEDTA may be a more effective iron fortificant in high-phytate foods. Concerns about its cost and safety, however, have delayed its application in fortification programmes. This thesis is based on a 5-month randomised placebo-controlled trial conducted among school children (n = 516) aged 3-8 years in Kenya in May-November 2005. It aimed to measure the benefits of fortification with NaFeEDTA or electrolytic iron, and to assess the safety of using NaFeEDTA as an iron fortificant. The specific objectives were to assess a) the efficacy of fortifying whole maize flour with NaFeEDTA (28 mg iron/kg flour or 56 mg/kg) or electrolytic iron (56 mg/kg); b) the effect of the intervention on cognitive and motor function; c) response to the intervention of individuals with α + -thalassaemia genotype relative to their counterparts with a normal genotype; d) and the effect of NaFeEDTA on the status of zinc, calcium, copper, magnesium and manganese. Fortification with NaFeEDTA at high levels (56 mg iron per kg flour), or low levels (28 mg/kg) reduced the prevalence of iron deficiency anaemia by 89% (95% CI 49% to 97%) and 48% (-20% to 77%), respectively. High-dose fortification with NaFeEDTA led to larger gains in iron status than low-dose level, and was more efficacious in children with iron deficiency at baseline. By contrast, electrolytic iron did not improve iron status. There was no evidence that the iron intervention improved either cognitive or motor function of these children; or that children with the α + -thalassaemia genotype responded differently to the iron intervention than their peers with a normal genotype. There was also no evidence that NaFeEDTA adversely affected the status of the nutritionally important mineral elements assessed. The thesis concludes that in high-phytate flours, NaFeEDTA is more suitable than electrolytic iron for supplementation of iron in the diet. Governments should act and implement national programmes to fortify industrially processed flour, whereby NaFeEDTA should be considered the preferred fortificant in high-phytate food vehicles.


Plant fossils collected from Bhareli Formation exposed in Pinjoli Nala section situated on Bhalukpong Bomdila Road section, West Kameng District, Arunachal Pradesh are described. The assemblage is represented by Gangamopteris karharbariensis, Glossopteris communis, G. stenoneura, G. longicaulis, G. indica, G. tenuifolia, G. spatulata, G. taeniensis, G. subtilis, Glossopteris sp. cf, G. decipiens, Glossopteris sp., Noeggerathiopsis hislopii, Samaropsis ganjrensis, seed bearing organ, Vertebraria indica, scale leaf and equisetalean axes. The flora is comparable with the floristics of Lower Barakar Formation of India.


This dissertation, based on 14 months of fieldwork carried out in central, northern and north-eastern Thailand, focuses on laypeople's demands on contemporary Thai Theravada sangha. In the aftermath of the economic breakdown in 1997, an intense discussion concerning the moral status of the sangha took place. The religious interests and demands clearly differ between different groups. What still seems to unify these groups or classes of Buddhists, however, is their concern for the sangha's compliance with a few vinaya-rules such as observing the chastity vow and not keeping donations obtained in merit making for personal use. In an attempt to move beyond the obvious, this dissertation applies an exchange theory to problematize the above. Two separate but intimately related spheres exist in modern Thai society; a short-term sphere where profit making, individual success, vitality and consumption of luxury goods are tolerated and even spoken for, and a long-term sphere concerned with the reproduction of social and cosmic systems. While the latter sphere is regarded as morally positive, the former is, if not negative, at least morally ambiguous. If surplus (money, food and other gifts) is transferred from the short-term sphere to the other sphere, however, it is not only considered a morally positive act, but also as constituting an exchange of creativity. This exchange is attributed to the separation of the spheres, which implies that if distinctions that reify them are blurred, reactions will not be absent.

The monk's concern with his non-laypeople behaviour makes him more or less a negation of the male gender. Moreover, while these regulations certainly make the monk's gender different from the layman's, they also make it dangerously similar to the female gender ? and risks of category transgressions are usually countered with taboos. When discussing sex- and money monks, the Thai Buddhists did not only question the moral status of the sangha. They also, indirectly, held it responsible for the economic crisis. The status of the sangha is thus linked to the status of the nation. While this certainly highlights the habitus of the monks, it simultaneously draws attention to the laypeople which, like Eve, provided the sangha with the apple that kicked humanity out of Eden. The Wat Phra Dhammakaya controversy could arguably be seen in this context. The majority of the movement's followers consist of affluent middleclass people; a section of Thai society dominated by the ethnic Chinese. Consequently, the questioning of the sangha that took place in the aftermath of the economic crisis, could be seen as religiously as well as politically motivated.


We call markets in which intermediaries sell networks of suppliers to consumers who are uncertain about their needs "option demand markets." In these markets, suppliers may grant the intermediaries discounts in order to be admitted to their networks. We derive a measure of each supplier's market power within the network; the measure is based on the additional ex ante expected utility consumers obtain from the supplier's inclusion. We empirically validate the WTP measure by considering managed care purchases of hospital services in the San Diego market. Finally, we present three applications, including an analysis of hospital mergers in San Diego.


In recent years, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has often been described as the first science fiction novel. Brian Aldiss, himself a writer of science fiction, amongst others identified Frankenstein as 'the Origin of the Species' of science fiction. Such a description of course can only be true for a generation of readers who are comfortable with the expectations of science fiction, and Mary Shelley can have had no such expectations. However, in its representation of the creature's creation through the reanimation of disparate dead body parts, the novel is clearly about science. This essay, which focuses particularly on Shelley's representation of Victor's education as a man of science, and his subsequent experiment with the creature, demonstrates how the novel establishes distinct kinds of experimental investigation into the meaning of life, some associated with science, others with alchemy. Such concerns reflect Shelley's interest in the radical political culture of her time and the recent past. The novel negotiates the relations of dependence and disjunction between these concerns of science and politics in its language and plot. The form of the novel offers itself as a useful intellectual tool, allowing these disparate forms of thought to jostle up against each other, not in resolution but in colloquy. The novel form, and in particular the gothic mode adopted by Shelley, allows for the contradictions, confusions and errors of the science to be overlooked and underplayed, incorporated into the creative act of reading.


Developments in the Turkish textile and apparel industries carry a high influence on the development of Turkish economy with their substantial shares in the total industrial production. This is the first study that documents the cyclical economic asymmetric behavioral dynamics of the Turkish textile and apparel industries by utilizing the Markov regime switching models to the mean and variance at monthly frequencies by using Expectation Maximization algorithm. The results provide a further detailed insight about the asymmetric dynamics of these sectors by examining nonlinearity, determining the number of regimes, identifying the regime dependent variances, calculating the transition and smoothed probabilities, and documenting the regime classifications with respect to each identified regime. The study also employs the estimated transition probabilities to define and quantify the duration and persistence of staying in each particular regime for each of the sectors. Revealing these results about the Turkish textile and apparel industries gives a better understanding for policy makers in terms of designing effective policies to increase competitiveness in the global markets.


ABSTRACT China's 'Market for Technology' policy has attracted much interest over the past decade. In light of a relative emphasis on the spillover effects of joint ventures, this study examines the transferring effects of Multinationals' (MNCs) outbound open innovation in such a context. A survey of 2071 research and development (R&D) contract transactions between Chinese entities and MNCs indicates both internal factors (e.g. organisational capabilities) and external factors (e.g. the role of Intellectual Property protection) affect the transferring effects, which reformulate the focus of the Policy from the relational dimension of 'Government vs. MNCs' to the transactional dimension of 'Domestic entities vs. MNCs'. We thus conclude that MNCs' active initiative in the involvement of technology transfer and the success of domestic transaction partners combine to contribute to the technology progress within China's 'Market for Technology' policy.


Gas chromatographic analyses of 37 degrees C headspace vapors above liquid phases saturated with sodium chloride demonstrated that the partitioning of isopropanol, n-propanol, and t-butanol from blood, plasma, or serum to headspace vapor was greatly reduced relative to that observed with the use of water as the liquid phase. The partitioning of ethanol and acetone was moderately reduced with these specimens relative to water, while no effect was seen with methanol or acetonitrile. Normal urine only slightly affected relative partitioning, and vitreous humor had no effect. The partitioning reductions observed with blood were not affected by changing the equilibration temperature to 25 degrees C, by lengthening the equilibration time to three days, nor by changing the concentration of the volatiles in the liquid phase. The use of saturated sodium sulfate enhanced the differences in partitioning observed between water and blood. Only with substantial dilution (5:1) of blood specimens was the effect abolished.


Recent work on pricing has shown that neoclassical microeconomic theory (NCMT) is preferred to tendering theory and that implied by absorption, or full‐cost, pricing of construction work because of its explicit treatment of market conditions, competitor behaviour and firm capacity levels. Applying NCMT in practice, however, requires the consideration of pricing from a marketing perspective. This paper examines the challenges involved in terms of the two prevalent marketing paradigms—marketing mix and relationship marketing—to pricing construction work generally, and the traditional contracting (TC), design and construction (D&C) and speculative building (SB) procurement systems in particular. In general, the marketing mix (MM) approach, having the closest fit with NCMT, is most aligned to current practice. However, conceptual and practical limitations are identified. Relationship marketing (RM) is theoretically more applicable, yet has been largely overlooked in practice due to the transaction costs and investment involved. Nevertheless, some RM tools are increasingly being adopted in response to demand criteria and clients' needs for continuous improvement, offering a challenge to NCMT‐related pricing. In terms of specific procurement arrangements, SB would seem most suited to the MM approach over the long term as it is closest to consumer good markets. D&C on the other hand is considered to be the most price sensitive to demand factors, with SB the least because of its ability to control resources, specifically land and financial packages, while TC is most suited to developing RM practices.


Background Acne can adversely impact those affected in multiple dimensions. The purpose of this study was to determine the most prominent impacts identified by acne patients and by clinicians. Methods Independent Delphi surveys for acne patients and clinicians were conducted to achieve consensus regarding acne impacts within each group. Acne patients were recruited from outpatient clinics of authors (AL, JT, and DT). The first phase involved qualitative responses, where emergent themes were identified and used to generate items for 2 subsequent phases. Results The qualitative phase generated 64 items in 3 themes: psychological, sociological, and treatment related. These items were independently ranked in importance by patients and by clinicians. Consensus for importance was achieved for 34 items by patients and 43 by clinicians. Patient-identified highest ranked items were being self-conscious, feeling unattractive, feeling uncomfortable in own skin, unattractive to others, would not want pictures taken, envious of people with clear skin, and time/effort spent concealing scarring; while clinicians identified feeling unattractive. Conclusions We identify acne impacts within psychological, sociological, and treatment-related domains by acne patients and clinicians. Further, we establish discrepancies between patients and clinicians regarding the impact of acne. This provides evidence for the importance of establishing patient-reported outcomes.


Lack of contraceptive choices which meet the requirements is one of the contributing factors to less participation of man in contraceptive use. This research aimed to study the effectiveness of natural material for alternative male contraception, by injecting papayan seed extract with Cibinong varietyn (Carica papaya L.) to long tail monkey (Macaca fascicularis L). The research was conducted at Primates Study Center, Institute of Agriculture, Bogor. Total samples of this research were 8 monkeys, with three intervention groups and one control group. Papaya seed extract was injected via intramuscular in 21 days, with dose for each group were 40 mg/monkey, 80 mg/monkey, and 120 mg/monkey. Data analysis of spermatozoa quality (motility, viability, morfology) was done by using Cochran test before and after intervention stages, and during recovery stage. Meanwhile, data aalysis of spermatozoa concentration and testosterone hormone level was done by using Friedman test. Result of this reseach demonstrated reduction of motility, viability, and morfology of spermatozoa after inejction of papaya seed extract and increase to normal level at recovery stage (p l0.05). These results was supported with cement aglutination. The most effective dose was at 40 mg/monkey/day, with reduction of spermatozoa motility from 87.5 % to 40%, and reduction of ntestosterone level from 2.35 ng/mL to 1.83 ng/mL. Even though spermatozoa motility and testosterone hormone level reduced, but its conditions were still in good condition category.


LILY is a high performance VLIW DSP processor for multimedia applications, developed by Tsinghua University. The processor classifies the instructions, and determines whether the instructions should be issued in parallel according to the order of the instructions. Under this parallelism, LILY processor is capable of saving one bit of operation code in the condition of inserting very few no operation (NOP) instructions. In addition, it is needed to design a corresponding assembler to accommodate the above new parallelism, which aids LILY to complete the highly efficient method. The evaluation results show satisfactory suitability of the processor for high performance applications, high code density, and small program code size.1.


We construct an eleven-dimensional superspace with superspace coordinates and formulate a finite M-theory using non-anticommutative geometry. The conjectured M-theory has the correct eleven-dimensional supergravity low energy limit. We consider the problem of finding a stable finite M-theory which has de Sitter space as a natural ground state, and the problem of eliminating possible future horizons.


Abstract. In order to infer phylogenetic relationships within the extraordinarily speciesrich order Coleoptera, a cladistic analysis is performed, in which 516 adult and larval morphological characters are scored for 359 beetle taxa, representing 314 families or subfamilies plus seven outgroup taxa representing seven holometabolan orders. Many morphological features are discussed at length with accompanying illustrations, and an attempt is made to homologize these and employ a uniform set of terms throughout the order. The resulting data matrix is analyzed using the parsimony ratchet in conjunction with implied weighting. The resulting most parsimonious tree found the order Strepsiptera to be sister to Coleoptera, each of the four coleopteran suborders to be monophyletic and subordinal relationships as follows: (Archostemata + Adephaga) + (Myxophaga + Polyphaga), but without significant support for either clade. The topology of the remainder of the tree is consistent with many prior molecular and morphological analyses, with the monophyly of superfamilies Hydrophiloidea (sensu lato), Scarabaeoidea and Curculionoidea and many currently recognized families and subfamilies are well supported, with weaker support for Elateroidea, Cucujiformia and Phytophaga.


Pervasive sensing is increasing our ability to monitor the status of patients not only when they are hospitalized but also during home recovery. As a result, lots of data are collected and are available for multiple purposes. If operations can take advantage of timely and detailed data, the huge amount of data collected can also be useful for analytics. However, these data may be unusable for two reasons: data quality and performance problems. First, if the quality of the collected values is low, the processing activities could produce insignificant results. Second, if the system does not guarantee adequate performance, the results may not be delivered at the right time. The goal of this document is to propose a data utility model that considers the impact of the quality of the data sources (e.g., collected data, biographical data, and clinical history) on the expected results and allows for improvement of the performance through utility-driven data management in a Fog environment. Regarding data quality, our approach aims to consider it as a context-dependent problem: a given dataset can be considered useful for one application and inadequate for another application. For this reason, we suggest a context-dependent quality assessment considering dimensions such as accuracy, completeness, consistency, and timeliness, and we argue that different applications have different quality requirements to consider. The management of data in Fog computing also requires particular attention to quality of service requirements. For this reason, we include QoS aspects in the data utility model, such as availability, response time, and latency. Based on the proposed data utility model, we present an approach based on a goal model capable of identifying when one or more dimensions of quality of service or data quality are violated and of suggesting which is the best action to be taken to address this violation. The proposed approach is evaluated with a real and appropriately anonymized dataset, obtained as part of the experimental procedure of a research project in which a device with a set of sensors (inertial, temperature, humidity, and light sensors) is used to collect motion and environmental data associated with the daily physical activities of healthy young volunteers.


Diamond is a unique material with outstanding physical and chemical properties. Among these are very unusual properties of the diamond surface; i.e., its negative electron affinity when hydrogen terminated (i.e., 'negative work-function') and the p-type 2D electrical conductivity it shows (when exposed to different atmospheres). These make diamond a material of choice for the fundamental study of a variety of electron-emission processes as well as for their application, on the nano-scale, as point cold electron-emission devices and various nano-size electronic devices. The uniqueness of the diamond surface, when hydrogen terminated are discussed. Results on the emission of electrons from diamond induced by an external electric field (field emission) by electron-impact (secondary electron emission) and by ion-impact (ion-induced electron-emission) are reviewed. Modifications of these properties on the nano-scale by single ion-impacts and by localised electric fields (from a STM tip) are demonstrated. Stunning results on huge ion-induced electron emission and their rapid degradation are presented and explained. The possible application of the electron-emission from diamond utilising its 2D surface conductivity and the resulting quantisation are discussed enabling the realisation of low dimensional (line and point) devices including point sources of cold electrons and for nano scale electronic devices.


Abstract A substantial minority of veterans struggle as they reintegrate into civilian life, reporting problems with vocational attainment, legal/financial/housing challenges, physical and mental health conditions, and social/interpersonal issues. While there are thousands of programs and services offered to veterans, little is known about which ones they use. In the current exploratory study, veterans separated from active duty in the prior three-months (48,965) were invited to complete a survey. Two primary questions were addressed: What programs/services did veterans use to assist in their reintegration to civilian life? What specific components/attributes of those programs did veterans report using? A total of 9566 veterans completed the survey. Approximately, two-thirds of veterans used at least one program to enhance their well-being, while one-third reported using multiple programs across multiple domains. Veterans primarily sought assistance for employment and educational advancement. Fewer veterans sought assistance for legal/financial/housing, health, and social functioning challenges. Social service providers and policy makers should be aware of the resources veterans use as they reintegrate into civilian life. Future research should examine factors that predict the use and nonuse of veteran reintegration programs, how use changes over time, and what factors predict program/service use, particularly among veterans at risk for poor transition outcomes.


A two-site ELISA and a bioassay were used to detect NGF-like activity in human brain tissue. Both assays detected mouse NGF and recombinant human NGF with approximately equal sensitivity, whereas the antibodies showed little cross-reactivity with the recombinant human proteins NT-3 and brain-derived neurotrophic factor. NGF-like activity was detected in fresh human cortical samples obtained from epileptic patients, with the highest activity observed in the right hemisphere of men. NGF-like activity was subsequently measured in autopsy samples of frontal and occipital cortex from patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and from individuals with no history or pathological evidence of AD. Based on both the ELISA and the bioassay measurements, NGF-like activity was significantly elevated in both brain regions in AD. These results demonstrate the feasibility of detecting NGF-like activity in both fresh and postmortem human brain tissue and further suggest that AD is characterized by increased, rather than decreased, levels of cortical beta-NGF. The AD-related increase in NGF may be a consequence of degenerative changes in the basal forebrain cholinergic system.


Return to work after cardiac events is an especially delicate question for the clinician. The cardiologic caregiver must evaluate the full clinical picture. including symptoms and morphological and functional status, as well as address complex personal. psychological, social, economic, legal. and ethical issues. The importance of job characteristics is illustrated by the existing, albeit limited, longitudinal data showing that return to high-strain work is a significant independent predictor of mortality in young men post-myocardial infarction.


We proposed and demonstrated a bidirectional wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network by using spectrum-sliced light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with cyclic arrayed-waveguide gratings (AWGs). When the spectrum-slicing technique is used, it is often difficult to secure an adequate amount of system margin due to the large slicing loss and low output power of LED. To overcome this problem, we reduced the slicing loss by using all the peaks of the spectrum-sliced light (separated by the free-spectral range of AWG) and improved the receiver sensitivity by using the forward-error correction technique. The excessive dispersion penalty (caused by using multiple peaks) was suppressed by using a simple dispersion precompensation circuit.


Spatial resolution in the conventional optical microscopy depends on diffraction limit. Photon scanning tunneling microscopy is one of the microscopic methods that surpass the diffraction limit. It scans an object with detecting evanescent wave on object surface. Evanescent wave is scattered by the tip of a fiber probe and guided to a detector by the fiber probe. Not all of the scattered ray can be detected. Only the scattered ray from the aperture of a fiber probe can be detected. We propose to improve an image by detecting the state of scattered ray and a new method to maintain the probe sample distance constant by keeping the quantity of scattered ray constant.


As an analytic and an object of study, disability provides a powerful lens to refocus and potentially transform thinking about new and enduring concerns shaping contemporary anthropology. At its most basic, the recognition of disability as a universal social fact helps us to understand the cultural specificities of personhood and to reconsider the unstable boundaries of the category of the human. This special issue of Current Anthropology is based on a 2018 Wenner-Gren international symposium on disability addressing this underrepresented area of research. The articles published here demonstrate the transformative value of critical anthropological studies of disability for many of our discipline's key questions regarding kinship, biopolitics, the life course, inequality/racism, war and violence, technology and materiality, and the importance of disability to decolonizing perspectives in anthropology.


This paper proposes a novel low-profile quad-band multifunctional solar PIFA consisting of a polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) solar cell stacked suspended modified radiating element with Z and double L-slots. The measured return loss (S11) and E-plane/H-plane far-field radiation patterns demonstrate that the fabricated solar PIFA has quad-band radiation characteristics operating at the frequency bands of 1.75-1.82 GHz, 2.38-2.61 GHz, 3.26-3.53 GHz and 4.66-4.83 GHz with measured impedance bandwidths of 3.91%, 9.38%, 7.94% and 3.58% and gains of 2.1, 6.4, 7.6 and 5.5 dBi, respectively. The proposed solar PIFA operates with a measured solar efficiency of 13.9%, generating a DC power output of 34 mW as a result of the photovoltaic effect.


PURPOSES: In this research was studied the diagnostic ability of the Heidelberg Retinal Tomograph (HRT II), GDx nerve fiber analyzer (GDx), Short-wavelenght Automated Perimetry (SWAP) and Frequency-doubling technology (FDT), all of them together and also separately in the diagnosis of glaucoma. METHODS: Sixty glaucomatous patients and 60 normal ones were submitted to examination with the technology of HRT II, GDx, FDT and SWAP. In the interpretation of HRT, based on the Moorfields regression analysis, were considered abnormal when at least one area of the neuroretinal ring was outside the bounds of normality. GDx was defined as altered, when it was observed that at least one index was considered by equipment program as outside of normal limits, excluding the index symmetry, or when "the deviation from normal graph" appeared a quadrant with significance below 5%. The FDT was considered abnormal when at least one region tested presented with severe defects, or two contiguous moderate defects in at least two reliable tests. For SWAP was adopted the abnormality criteria proposed by Anderson. Logistic regression analysis was performed. RESULTS: When the technologies were studied separately, the Logistic regression analysis showed better odds ratio rates to test positive for glaucoma with HRT (22.49), followed by EAP (21.71), FDT (3.97) and GDx (2.73). When positive tests were associated with different technologies, the odds ratios increased. In cases with HRT, FDT and PAA tests, outside normal bounds, the odds ratio was 252.6. Concerning the HRT, GDx and PAA the result have changed to 173.1. When we associate positive tests from different technologies, the odds ratio of glaucomatous patients have increased considerably, reaching 689.7 with all the tests outside normal bounds, which have happened with 26 patients of this study. CONCLUSIONS: The Logistic Regression analysis confirmed that the abnormal tests of HRT and PAA have shown to be the highest reasons for glaucoma occurrence. The association of abnormal tests increased the odds ratio, especially when the HRT and PAA were out of normal bounds.


Abstract Two new species of Dolichothele Mello-Leitão, 1923 are described from Brazil and Bolivia, D. mottai sp. n. from Distrito Federal and the state of Goiás, Brazil, and D. camargorum sp. n. from the state of Rondônia, Brazil, and the La Paz region, Bolivia. Males of the two new species resemble Dolichothele bolivianum (Vol, 2001) in having a small subapical keel on the distal embolus and females in particular by the short spermatheca. Dolichothele bolivianum is redescribed, and its geographical distribution is herein restricted to Bolivia and the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil.


Various native and hinge-modified forms of Ig with identical Ids were reacted with an anti-Id mAb, and the resultant immune complexes were analyzed by negative stain immunoelectron microscopy. Complexes were scored for their geometry (linear versus ring complexes) and size (dimer, trimer, etc.). Ring dimers are the thermodynamically most favorable configuration, unless inhibited by steric and/or flexibility constraints. We found ring dimerization to correlate with the length of the upper, but not middle or lower, hinge. In contrast, the geometry and size of complexes of those molecules lacking formal hinges were unpredictable. A hingeless IgG mutant and native IgE readily formed ring dimers. Remarkably, monomeric IgM formed more ring dimers than any of the other Igs tested, including IgG3. We also tagged the Fab arms and measured the mean Fab-Fab angles and the degree of angular variation for each type of Ig. Surprisingly, IgM proved the most flexible by this assay. In hinged Igs, there was a correlation between length of the upper hinge and Fab-Fab flexibility. In contrast, we found no correlation between the mean Fab-Fab angle in uncomplexed Igs and their ability to dimerize with anti-Id mAb. These data suggest that the physicochemical methods typically used to evaluate molecular flexibility are often of low predictive value when tested in a functional assay.


Worthy, T.H. & Yates, A., 27.3.2015. Connecting the thigh and foot: resolving the association of post-cranial elements in the species of Ilbandornis (Aves: Dromornithidae). Alcheringa 39, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518 Fossils of the two mid-sized dromornithid species classified in Ilbandornis are re-examined. A study of the large series of fossils from the late Miocene (ca 9–7 Ma) Alcoota Local Fauna shows that the holotypes of Ilbandornis woodburnei Rich and Ilbandornis lawsoni Rich, a femur and a tarsometatarsus, respectively, pertain to separate taxa. However, the femora and tibiotarsi of these species have been confused in the past. We provide qualitative descriptions and morphometrics to discriminate the limb bones, which overlap in absolute size. Ilbandornis woodburnei is characterized by short tarsometatarsi, tibiotarsi with relatively broad distal ends, and femora with a broad sulcus patellaris. In contrast, I. lawsoni has very elongate tarsometatarsi, slender tibiotarsi with relatively narrow distal ends, and femora with a narrow sulcus patellaris. Two morphotypes of the proximal pedal phalanges are present in the Alcoota LF. These manifest overlapping length ranges but are distinguished by relative robustness and other details of shape. For each phalanx II.1, III.1 and IV.1, those referred to I. lawsoni are more slender than those referred to I. woodburnei, with, for example, the trochlea articularis of II.1 and the proximal width of III.1 as a proportion of length, both more transversely compressed. Examination of the dromornithids from the middle Miocene Bullock Creek Local Fauna (ca 15–12 Ma), previously referred to? Bullockornis sp., and the late Miocene Ongeva LF (ca 7–6 Ma) reveals that two species of Ilbandornis are present in each fauna. On available data, these are indistinguishable from I. lawsoni and I. woodburnei, attesting to the continuity of these lineages minimally from 12 Ma to 7 Ma in parallel with a Dromornis lineage. Trevor H. Worthy [firstname.lastname@example.com], School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, GPO 2100, Adelaide 5001, SA, Australia; Adam Yates [firstname.lastname@example.com], Museum of Central Australia, PO Box 831, Alice Springs, Northern Territory 0871, Australia.


Background In Zambia, majority rural women deliver at home without skilled birth attendants, leading to high maternal mortality rate (MMR) 591/100,000 live births; among highest worldwide 60% Zambians live below poverty line. Institutional delivery by skilled birth attendants is considered most important strategy to reduce MMR. Institutional deliveries are low (48%) despite high single antenatal attendance (93%). An important barrier to institutional delivery identified was demands by health providers requesting women to bring delivery supplies and mother/baby clothes. Objectives The aim of this study was to determine the effect of provision of non-financial incentives on institutional deliveries in rural Monze district, Zambia. Methods A one-year community intervention trial was conducted (Jan–Dec 2014) supported by UNICEF and WHO. Two comparable rural regions in Monze separated by central urban region, intervention arm expectant women who chose delivering at health facility received a mother-baby delivery-pack at delivery containing basic delivery supplies as non-financial incentives, control arm continued with routine health services. Primary outcome-measure was comparison of the number of institutional deliveries in the two arms over one year, and comparing institutional deliveries before (2012 & 2013) and after (2014) the intervention. Result There was a 43% increase in institutional deliveries in the intervention arm in 2014 (n=2396) compared to 2013 (n=1674), 2012 (n=1680); p<0.000, while in the control arm the numbers of deliveries did not significantly change over the three years (2012 (n=1182); 2013 (n=1322); 2014 (n=1182); p>0.103). Conclusion The mother-baby delivery pack provides high-impact, low-cost, easier-to-replicate and scale-up intervention using existing health systems. The pack was developed responding to hidden barriers identified by end users in the community through cross-sectional survey conducted prior to the study. The results provide scientific evidence for policymakers to design effective interventions to overcome reversible barriers hindering facility utilisation by pregnant-women, a key intervention for reducing MMR.


Vitamin D deficiency is a common health problem worldwide, in particular among older people. Vitamin D regulates and modulates the physiology and function of multiple human systems, including the skeletal muscle. The effect of vitamin D on the muscle has been widely investigated, suggesting that this hormone can stimulate the proliferation and differentiation of skeletal muscle fibers, maintaining and improving muscle strength and physical performance. Older persons have a higher prevalence of low Vitamin D levels as a consequence of low dietary intake and reduced ultraviolet irradiation of the skin. Therefore, older people with vitamin D deficiency might be at risk of sarcopenia, a geriatric syndrome characterized by the progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength often complicated by adverse events, such as falls, disability hospitalization and death. Several randomized clinical trials have been conducted to investigate the effect of oral vitamin D supplementation in older patients to prevent or treat sarcopenia, but results are still controversial. In this narrative review we summarize the biological, clinical and epidemiological evidence supporting the hypothesis of a causal association between Vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of sarcopenia in older people.